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Thursday, April 17, 2014

Scrap Room Relocation...

Ok, so.

Here it is. The scrap room transformation. Well, more like relocation.

When we first moved to this house 6 years ago, I called dibs on the office space off the front entry so fast it'd make your head spin. At that point Mr B was getting dressed in the morning, putting on a tie, and driving to an office a couple of miles away and my being in the home office was not an issue.

Fast forward 5 years; one son marries and moves away, Mr B works entirely from home now (complete tie freedom, finally) and his spot at the end of the family room is just not ideal any longer. (Plus I can see a fireplace in that spot and it's a whole lot lovelier than his desk and computer.) Time to evolve. The boys no longer need the bonus room at the top of the stairs to play Xbox, Wii or Rock Band. It's a bright, open space and might be perfect for my activities and then we could make the home office a real home office.

So that's what we did.

And everybody lived happily ever after.

For about 15 minutes.

This is the view from the top of the stairs and just outside our bedroom door.

There are no doors to close here to hide inevitable messes.

It's nice when it's all clean and tidy like this, isn't it.

How often do you think it looks like this??

That's right, NEVER!!

So I had to make some mental adjustments, get myself a new attitude and go visit Ikea. That's when things started looking up. I really needed a way to be able to "hide the mess" like I used to be able to do in the closet downstairs.

This Expedit shelving unit with baskets from Target are filling that objective very nicely now. I need the visual uniformity to make me feel like everything in my life is under control. Inside the baskets might be a different story, but from here, it looks good. In those baskets I store patterned paper, embellishments by type, design team product, and so on. They are labelled (to make remembering new storage locations easier) and I love that so much it's staying like that.

Those metal file bins up top are OLD Ikea product that I only ever saw for a short time and have since regretted not buying all. of. the. things! They hold items I don't reach for as often….extra adhesive, paints, silk flowers, foam stamps (yes they have escaped all previous purges. You mark my words, they're going to come back in style and who'll be laughing then??)

In the center of the room I have two Ikea Linnmon tables pushed up against each other. Now I can invite my crafty friends over to play and there's room for everyone!

This desk/corner is my "technology center". Which makes it sound pretty legit, right??

The gallery wall was pretty much exactly like this from when this was our games room. I just shifted a few photos and made room for the vintage cameras. (One of which, was actually my wedding gift to Mr B. I guess that makes us vintage too!)

Happily, there is still room for the couch at the end of the room making it easy for my family to plop down and visit any time they like. That happens a lot and I like it.

These Alex drawers (also from Ikea) I've had for years and they are the BEST scrappy investment I've ever made!

It's actually a bedroom dresser, but I've made it into my stamping/card making center. The height is perfect for stand up stamping, and the drawers are the perfect depth for all my newly re-organized stamps.